


Lavender

by Mertiya



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Long Hair, No actual spoilers for The Last Jedi other than the using it to characterize Amilyn, Tea, light teasing, very very soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 10:32:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13144797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: Leia appears at Amilyn's door in the middle of the night, needing comfort.  Tea is made, and so are confessions.





	Lavender

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Camille from Vorthos Server](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Camille+from+Vorthos+Server).



When Amilyn wakes in the middle of the night to a knock on her door, her first thought is that it’s a military emergency. She stumbles out of her bunk and totters over to the door to open it, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, trying to think of the likeliest base to have been attacked.

            Leia’s standing outside, her long hair falling about her shoulders. Amilyn has the strongest urge to reach out and touch it, let those silvery streaks run like moonlight through her fingers. “What’s happened?” she asks, and Leia looks up. Her eyes are red and swollen with tears, although she’s clearly washed her face and tried to make herself look presentable. The only thing out of place is her unbound hair.

            “Han left.” Leia’s voice is dull, numb with sorrow, and Amilyn’s heart contracts inside her.

            “What?” she asks, because it seems impossible. Han and Leia have always had their differences, their relationship balanced on a razor’s edge, but it was a balance that _worked_ for them. And yet everything has been different since they lost their son. Han’s temper became more volatile; Leia sank more and more into silence. Amilyn, moving around the outside, couldn’t help but see the cracks forming, but still. Why would he do this to her?

            “He left.” Leia sighs, rubbing at her eye. “It wasn’t working anymore. We both saw Ben—everywhere. It’s been coming for some time, but it—hurts more than I thought it would.”

            It must have cost her quite a lot to make that confession. It’s not weakness, but Leia is so terrified of showing anything that isn’t unrelenting strength. “Please,” Amilyn says, standing aside from the doorway. “Come in.”

            “Thank you.” Leia nods and moves past her, stopping in the middle of the floor and looking around dumbly, as if she’s exhausted her ability to make decisions in the past twenty-four hours.

            “May I touch you?” Normally, touch isn’t something Amilyn asks Leia about. They’ve always had a relationship built on simple, gentle contact. The occasional brush of fingers on the backs of hands, the quick clasp of a comradely hand on a shoulder. But Leia seems so strangely fragile, as if she’s frozen into a crystalline figure, as if the slightest shock could shatter her.

            Leia nods, absently, and she lets Amilyn steer her gently into the little kitchen. “Tea?” Amilyn asks, and again, Leia nods. “What kind would you like?”

            “I don’t know.” Leia presses her hands over her eyes and takes a deep breath. After a moment, she manages a smile. “You know I have no patience for learning all your silly, pretentious leaf water names.”

            “Lavender chamomile, then,” Amilyn decides. “It’s good for the nerves.”

            “My nerves are _fine_ ,” Leia shoots back, with a fraction of her usual spark. Then she sags, “All right, they’re not, but they ought to be.”

            “Of course, what have you had to deal with but losing your entire family?” Amilyn responds dryly.

            “It’s not that.” Leia actually chuckles, though, which Amilyn takes as a good sign. “Clearly, it is. It’s just that I’ve been expecting this, and I thought I’d made my peace with it, but when I saw his empty bed, I just—didn’t want to be alone.”

            “I think that was very—wise,” Amilyn replies, sobering up. “And thank you for coming to me.”

            She gets a wan smile in response to that, and the warmth rising in her stomach and cheeks makes her turn away. Now is not the time to think about herself, she reminds herself carefully, and she busies herself with the tea. When she places it in front of Leia, her friend leans forward with a sigh and cups her small, shapely hands around it. They’ve aged, her hands—both Amilyn and Leia aren’t as young as they once were—but they’re still Leia’s hands. They still have the touch of grace Amilyn noticed the first day they met.

            “I can’t believe I’m letting you sit me down and make me tea like a homesick schoolchild,” Leia groans. She shakes her head, and her curtain of hair rustles. Amilyn finds her hand stealing outward, and then she stops herself. What is she _doing_? Leia is grieving for the loss of her son and her husband.

            Leia looks up at her. “Sit with me.” She pats the bench beside her invitingly, and Amilyn blinks, nods, slides in beside her. Leia sips at her tea, and then turns abruptly to the side. “I’m force-sensitive, you know,” she says, almost out of nowhere.

            “Of course?” Amilyn doesn’t understand.

            “But I was never formally trained,” Leia continues. “And I can’t always control it. So I’ve known for a while, you see.”

            Heat rushes to Amilyn’s cheeks as she understands all at once. “O-Oh.” She covers her face with her hands. “God. Leia. I’m so sorry.”

            And then she flinches as Leia rests her head on Amilyn’s shoulder. “Oh, don’t be an idiot, Ami,” Leia tells her. “Do you think I’d have told you if I minded? I told you, I’ve been expecting Han to leave for—some time now.” Her hand steals sideways to cover Amilyn’s.

            “Are you—”

            “I promise it wasn’t intended to be a seduction when I came here,” Leia says, and she sounds both hopeful and a little embarrassed. “I really did just need someone. Maybe you just picked an aphrodisiac leaf water.”

            “I did _not_!” Amilyn replies indignantly. “I would never besmirch the reputations of the tea merchants in such a fashion!”

            “Ah, those saintly tea merchants. I’m sure they’ll be glad to know you’re defending their honor.” Leia scoots sideways, tips her head up to look at Amilyn from beneath her lashes, and runs a hand through her long, long hair. Amilyn watches, mesmerized. “What does a girl have to do to get a kiss here?” Leia asks, sounding a little petulant. The fragility is fading from her form.

            “Ask, I suppose,” Amilyn replies, and she bends forward. Their lips meet gently at first, and she tastes the lavender and chamomile on Leia’s. After a moment or two, Leia deepens the kiss, and Amilyn, trembling a little, reaches out to comb her hand through Leia’s long hair. It’s as silky-smooth as she imagined, and Leia makes a contented noise as she runs her fingers through it. God, she could get lost in this hair. In this moment.

            Leia shifts forward and puts her arms around Amilyn, draws her lips down the side of Amilyn’s mouth and to her throat, and Amilyn can’t stop the soft, desperate noise that falls out of her mouth at the touch.

            “Would you like to take this to the bedroom?” Leia asks, after a long, warm, beautiful moment.

            “I would _very much_ like that,” Amilyn tells her. She pauses. “You haven’t finished your tea,” she points out.

            “I think the tea merchants will survive,” Leia replies wryly. “On the other hand, I may _not_ survive if I have to wait much longer to get these off of you.” She fingers at the drawstrings of Amilyn’s lace-edged night-shirt.

            “I suppose if it’s a matter of life and death,” Amilyn snickers. She kisses Leia again; it’s even sweeter the second time.

            “It is. Definitely.”

            Daringly, Amilyn slides a hand down Leia’s shoulder to her back and then a little lower. “If I must save your life again—” Leia wriggles, a pleased little wriggle.

            “Good,” she says. For a moment, something sad passes in front of her eyes, and then she shakes her head, shakes it off and rises to her feet, all business again and holds out her hand to Amilyn. “Come on.”

            As Amilyn takes it, she stares at the lights limning the silvery streaks in Leia’s hair again. Moonlight. She’s about to hold moonlight in her hands. She smiles, and Leia smiles, too, in answer.


End file.
